“This year, we have to build a robot that can play FIRST’s version of ultimate frisbee,” Smirnov said. “Last year, we built a robot that could play basketball, and we went to nationals in St. Louis with it. In the past, we’ve also had games of soccer, race car driving, inner tube hanging, etc.”

The robotics work area is filled with macheniery, and nobody is admitted into the fenced-off area without safety goggles. Photo by Paige Esterly

Smirnov is confident about this year’s competition.

“I can’t give off many details about it since we don’t want too much publicity on our progress for now; after all, it is a competition, but we do have a pretty fast robot,” he said. “I feel that with what we have designed and prototyped, we will probably make some opposing teams feel worried.”

But FIRST is about more than just the competition, and the FRC puts emphasis on the learning and sportsmanship aspects of the game.

“It [FRC] is also about learning about working with a strict time schedule, working in a team, learning programming, machine code, networking and gracious professionalism,” Smirnov said.